This trip was part of an Australian-Korean foundation DFAT grant to explore collaboration with Korean academics and industry. Keimyung University is located in the 4th largest city of Korea is composed of three campuses in the city of Daegu. Due to its beautiful campus garden setting it has become a Korean filming location for popular TV dramas and movies such as “East of Eden”, “Hourglass”, “Ditto” and “Boys Over Flowers”.

The meeting was arranged to discuss research collaborations for using novel emerging ECG sensor technology in our Australian Rural populations and for continuous measurement of ECG signals in translational studies for cardiac device development. We were delighted to receive an interesting summary research presentation by Dr Lee of his groups work, highlighting wireless ECG sensing technology, implantable ECG loop recorders and software development for diagnostics.

“We can see opportunities to collaborate on this technology for community health and wellness, and also with our cardiac assist program to aid continuous measurement of ECG signals,” says Associate Professor McLachlan.

“I am very impressed with the University and campus and technology developed -- our early career fellows Yuling Zhou and Yaxin Lu were very engaged and excited to see the development of this technology,” adds Associate Prof McLachlan.

“It is very useful to have an Australian RCS collaboration as this will facilitate linkage of data with Australian primary care services because we do not presently have access to Korean e-health records to test or embed our technology, and I hope to collaborate with you in next year in 2017,” says Dr Lee.

“In summary the meeting was very productive and the RCS chatted about our Rural Clinical School research in rural communities and the possibilities of integrating these ECG technologies into our experimental studies. We also discussed the potential for collaborative grants around research commercial development of these technologies,” says Associate Professor McLachlan.

“Keimyung University (KMU) is a private university in South Korea. The university was founded in 1954 by the leaders of the Northern PresbyterianChurch. Keimyung University’s motto is 'For the Kingdom of Truth, Justice and Love'.